Markets in Fashion

A phenomenological approach

Patrik Aspers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415511421
• eBook ISBN: 9781134280803
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Interest in contemporary cultural industries has grown in the past decade, as they take on a greater significance in our increasingly consumer-led society. Focusing on the world of fashion photography, this book presents an interdisciplinary approach in which this and other aesthetic markets, such as advertising, modelling, art, music and more, can be viewed.

The main thrust of this groundbreaking book, is in developing a theory for these cultural markets, characterized by insecurity, and where status and aesthetic diversity generate order and price differentiation. In these industries, services and products are offered that are a mix of the aesthetic and the economic, and for fashion photographers such as those studied here, it is necessary to carefully position themselves in the market by developing unique photographic styles and separating themselves from competitors.

Yet the markets in which these industries operate differ from the type of exchange markets depicted by neoclassical economists, and therefore cannot be considered using such modes of analysis. Instead Aspers conducts his study using empirical phenomenology, an original approach presented here for the first time, which can be easily used in other empirical studies. He draws on original empirical material; participant observation and interviews generated in New York and Stockholm; which bring a depth of analysis and a relevance to this book which academics, researchers and those with a vested interest in such industries will value.

Written by one of the world's brightest young economic sociologists, this fascinating book (previously published in Sweden and enthusiastically received) is endorsed by recognized industry authorities. A noteworthy book, it provides a foothold in the burgeoning sub discipline of economic sociology, and a significant analysis of the economics of the fashion photography industry.

1 Introduction

This book has three purposes. The first is to understand and thereby explain the market for fashion photography in Sweden. The second is to present an ethnography of this market. The third, and more general, purpose is to incorporate the phenomenological approach to the social sciences, which I believe to be useful for ethnographic studies. Moreover, only through phenomenology have researchers seriously approached the subjective perspective of the actors, a task I take to be essential for a scientific explanation in the social sciences.

I address a phenomenon that I conceptualize as a market. A market means, in brief, that people buy and sell certain goods or services. In this case it is fashion photographs that professional photographers produce and for which customers pay (cf. Leifer 1985: 442). A further reason to conceptualize this phenomenon as a market is that this is what the actors themselves do. Markets today clearly constitute an important topic in the economy. Though sociologists have conducted some research on markets, much more remains to be done. One important task is to analyze different types of markets. I will study a real market in which aesthetic values are central: the market for fashion photography. In this study I do not aim, but rather hope, to illuminate other markets of a similar type, such as those for designers’ work, clothes, furniture or other products.

Other examples are the markets for art directors, copywriters, stylists, or models. Naturally, this study will also be useful for understanding the markets for photography, and especially fashion photography, in other cities and countries. In sum, my hope is that the study will be especially useful for studies of all markets that include aesthetic values. Henceforth I call these markets aesthetic. These markets are typically found in the so-called cultural industries.

Over time, aesthetic markets have become more common and more important in terms of turnover. Moreover, these markets fit in very well with discussions of the “New Economy,” which can be characterized, for example, by highly skilled employees, quickly changing conditions, service work, relatively low costs of capital and an increased number of self-employed persons. The market for fashion photography, as I will show, shares some of these traits. Consequently, a study like this may contribute to the understanding of the New Economy.

In this introductory Chapter I will discuss some of the research questions, which are best addressed by first explaining the market for fashion photography. After that I briefly turn to fashion and fashion photography, and then discuss photography in relation to art and craft. The following section gives a view of the practice of fashion photography. Finally, I outline the structure of the book.

Research questions

To understand the market for fashion photography may require the researcher to address a series of questions. One of the most intriguing questions – though not necessarily the most important – has to do with style. How does a photographer’s style become “hot” and create a trend in the market? But there are many more questions. How can a photographer who cannot change the lens in his camera shoot for some of the most highly regarded fashion magazines? How is it that a photographer has to pay to get some assignments, but earns more on other assignments, though she does the same thing? Why do some photographers’ names appear in the bylines of advertisements when others do not? How can magazines be produced every week with fashion pictures that rarely allow the viewer to see what the clothes look like? How can a magazine that sells very few copies still set the tone on fashion photography for the market? How is it that the buyers of the magazines and the wearers of the clothes are between 12 and 100 years old but most models range in age from 13 to about 23 years old? How do producers see differences among themselves as well as among the customers? How is it that fashion pictures look differently (compare, for example, Plates VIII, X and XV)? As the study proceeds, it will become clear that questions like these cannot be answered in isolation. I will answer them by focusing on the essential question of this study: how does one understand the market for fashion photography in Sweden?

Photography and fashion

That pictures today surround us is obvious to everyone who can see. We take pictures with our own cameras and we see pictures taken by others – both amateurs and professionals. Photographs are used by both artists and professional photographers. Many photographic genres exist, but few get more attention than fashion photography, which is taking photographs of clothes. Fashion, a topic in its own right, has attracted people for centuries. Nearly everyone relates to the fashion of the time, either by adopting or by rejecting it. Thus fashion photography itself is subject to the whims of fashion.

Fashion photography

This study is not about fashion per se, nor is it about fashion photographs as such. As a topic that has been discussed by many sociologists fashion is naturally a part of the study. Fashion photography is about fashion, and its simplest view would stress that the pictures aim to present the clothes to potential buyers. But the focus of this study is not fashion photography in a “cultural” sense.¹ That is, my primary focus is not the content of the photographs. The photographs are of course part of the study, but it is not a study of the artistic development of styles of different named photographers – that is a topic more relevant to art historians or psychologists than to sociologists.² What is presented here is rather an understanding of the processes that make fashion photography look the way it does.³

To see the prominent place fashion photography has acquired, one need only open a life-style magazine or a fashion magazine, which present photographs in a wrapping of luxury and, quite often, of exclusiveness. Many magazines have sections on fashion or are entirely focused on it. The idea of fashion magazines is not a recent invention, though the number of magazines has increased over time. Around the end of World War I it became possible to print at an affordable cost and with a quality that enabled reproduction of photos. Since then the market for publications of fashion pictures has increased dramatically (Gunther [1994] 1998). Today computers have greatly lowered the cost of producing a magazine, making it easier to start a magazine, and explaining the growing number of magazines available. Fashion photographs do not only appear in magazines. There are huge billboards in subways and buses also carry pictures. At least in Sweden the director of commercials is often a photographer who also takes still fashion photographs.

Fashion photography is related to the status of photography in general. Photography as a medium was officially born in 1839, but it was not commercially exploited for some time. In Sweden, the market for fashion photography emerged much later. Not until the late 1980s can one say that photographers could define themselves as fashion photographers in any modern meaning of the word. To be a fashion photographer is connected to the very idea of having an identity as first a fashion photographer, and not as a photographer who sometimes does fashion. Besides the large changes in society that have also affected this market, such as globalization and internationalization, some effects are more specifically related to this typical market. Since the market for commercial photography became established, the available techniques to the photographers have developed greatly.⁴

Fashion photography is very much in vogue in Sweden as well as internationally today. The introduction of commercial TV in Sweden in the late 1980s greatly increased the demand for people capable of working with the media. Still photographers could work on TV commercials, and the production of music videos has often involved photographers. Moreover, the number of fashion-orientated magazines has also increased. Today the number of fashion editorials – the fashion stories that are produced by magazines – is much higher than 15 years ago. The demand for fashion photographers has increased comparably.

Though there is a long-term trend of greater importance of photography, one should note that this study was conducted during a booming economy. Though this fact has probably not affected the general results of the study, it may very well have pushed this market in a somewhat extreme direction. For example, one might have expected fewer magazines to emerge in a non-booming economy. That the market has grown can also be seen in other ways. One is that many of the most established photographers in Sweden are relatively young. The market for fashion photography is not big and this may be one reason why Swedish assistants and photographers are tending to work abroad.⁵

A further reason for calling photography “hot” today is the general trend among young people to work within the media. Among other things, media includes the field of photography and strongly related fields such as styling, magazine production and advertising agencies, as well as the Internet. The number of photography schools has also increased dramatically in Sweden. Few, if any, of those students dream of careers in medical photography; glamour and people are more valued photographic genres (Newburry 1997). Photographers have long been attracted to fashion photography because it has allowed them more aesthetic freedom than other photographic genres (Tellgren 1997: 103).

Art, money and craft in photography

There are many reasons for studying this market. The distinction between photography as a craft and photography as an art makes this market particularly interesting. The distinction on which I focus is between photography as a commercial activity that is completely incorporated into the economy, and photography as a form of art, and hence part of the aesthetic sphere (cf. Weber 1946: 323–331; Becker 1978, 1982; Faulkner 1983: 122). Howard Becker distinguishes between art and craft in the following way:

The person who does the work that gives the product its unique and expressive character is called an “artist” and the product itself “art.” Other people whose skills contribute in a supporting way are called “craftsmen.” The work they do is called “craft.” The same activity, using the same material and skills in what appear to be similar ways, may be called by either title, as may the people who engage in it.

(1978: 863)

The craftsman has less ambitious goals than the artist, and looks more to the function and less to the aesthetics of what is produced (Becker 1978: 864–867). Commercial photography has long been seen as primarily a craft. In the beginning, photographers had to be skilled chemists. Only later did photography become more widespread.⁶ It was also a long struggle to establish photography at major museums.⁷ But today fashion photographers exhibit their photographs in galleries, and thus “become” artists (cf. Giuffre 1996, 1999). A connected trend is that many books of fashion photography are being published, and almost every famous fashion photographer compiles a book of his or her photographs.⁸ This is most likely caused by a combination of two factors: the field of photography has developed more in the direction of art, and artists tend to use the photographic medium, so that it invades the field of photography (Becker 1978).⁹ These trends, if interpreted at a more abstract level, point to another trend: of less firm boundaries between the aesthetic sphere and the economic sphere.

Weber was one of the first thinkers to write on the clashes between the economic and the aesthetic spheres, though he followed Nietzsche in exploring this idea. The idea of spheres provides a useful background to contemporary discussion in the sociology of art literature. A substantial part of the literature on the sociology of art deals, to some extent, with the economic aspects of art and the art worlds (e.g. Becker 1963: 79–119, 1978, 1982; Bourdieu [1992] 1996; DiMaggio 1994; Faulkner 1971, 1983; Forty [1986] 1995; Giuffre 1996, 1999; Jensen 1994; Rosenblum 1978a; White and White [1965] 1993; White 1993a). To summarize the relationship between art and economy, it studies the various ways that the economic dimension affects art. From this literature, it seems safe to say that the economic dimension plays a major role in the aesthetic sphere.

Less research has started out from the opposite perspective: asking how the aesthetic dimension and the aesthetic value system permeate the economy (DiMaggio 1994). Becker, however, describes some formal traits that account for the way that art invades craft (1978). He describes how newcomers who bring prestige to a certain craft from an art world thereby redefine activities that previously were seen as craft. They may also bring new techniques, and as a result redefine the processes of the domain.

That photography is seen both as a craft and as a form of art makes this topic even more interesting to study. Does it have any consequences for how the market is constructed? Is there a conflict between art and craft in fashion photography? How do the actors themselves view it, and what is the relationship between the art market and the commercial market? One may, for example, assume that the different organizational principles and the different cultural meanings that are applied in these two spheres are likely to generate distinctions and possibly conflicts in this particular market.

The production of cultural products, it has been argued, has a special characteristic (Hirsch [1977] 1992). Hirsch defines a cultural product as “‘nonmaterial’ goods directed at a public of consumers, for whom they generally serve an aesthetic or expressive, rather than a clearly utilitarian function” ([1977] 1992: 365). Examples of cultural goods are “Movies, plays, books, art prints, phonograph records, and pro football games; each is nonmaterial in the sense that it embodies a live, one-of-a-kind performance and/or contains a unique set of ideas” (Hirsch [1977] 1992: 365). Hirsch sees a similarity in the way the production of cultural goods and construction projects are organized; he builds his argument on Stinchcombe’s idea of craft organized production (Stinchcombe [1959] 1992). Stinchcombe’s key idea is that the uncertainty and flux that are characteristic of these products lead to non-bureaucratic organizations (cf. Zuckerman 1999). Often many subcontractors come together to work on unique projects. This means that the central organization hires the special kind of “knowledge” needed for each unique production. Hirsch then applies this idea to cultural production. This idea is supported from studies of cultural production (e.g. Faulkner 1971, 1983). A problem with the Stinchcombe-Hirschian approach is that it downplays the role of the market. Hirsch does not relate the organizations – which he takes to be the prime units of analysis – to the markets in which they operate. All of the subcontractors are hired in markets. One may say that markets, or more generally speaking interfaces (White 1992), provide a “solution” to the insecurity that characterizes production of cultural items. Production may be handled within a single organization, or by hiring different subcontractors operating in different markets. Moreover, Hirsch does not discuss the central role of identity for the actors who get to sign a contract for the production nor does he discuss the results of the process between the central organization and the subcontractors. I argue that only by using the market and ideas of differentiation and comparison, which are conditions in all production markets, can one make the decisions that are so crucial in Hirsch’s discussion. I assert that Hirsch’s problem should be addressed from the perspective of the market; the organizational principles will fall out from such an analysis, rather than the other way around.¹⁰

An additional reason for studying this topic is that, as a rather extreme market, fashion photography provides insights that are less obvious in other markets. That the market is extreme will become clear as the study proceeds. The fashion business in general has an aura of beauty, sex, drugs and distinctions.¹¹ Furthermore, this market seems to be running on a turbo engine; it is like a social life at double speed.

The production of pictures

Like most social phenomena, this market can be analytically separated into different categories of actors. The most notable distinction in this market is between the photographers – the producers of the photographs – and the consumers of the photographs. In a wider circle of actors are the sellers of the products and services that the photographers use in the process of producing the photographs. At the same time, one can analyze the production chain on the buyers’ side, which consists of buyers of the photos, the buyers of the magazine, and the buyers of space for advertisements in the magazine (cf. Sverrisson 1998). One can go even further and identify a net of actors who take part in the production of advertisements. However, I focus on two key-categories of actors in the market: photographers and consumers of these photographs. However, I do not ignore actors like...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by Karin Knorr Cetina
• Preface to the second edition
• Preface to the first edition
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The study of markets
• 3 An overview of the fashion photography business
• 4 Fashion photographers as producers
• 5 The consumers of fashion photographs
• 6 The two markets for fashion photography
• 7 Towards a phenomenological sociology
• Appendix A: a guide to phenomenological sociology
• Appendix B: empirical work
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index